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Charles Dunne is one of the fastest players in the country... Danny Johnson managed to out pace Shay Logan over a pitch long race.. Aryibi has pace to burn... Cadden is no slouch and neither is Frear. There's pace in the team. Elliot Frear is an out and out left winger, Jake Hastie is also a left winger. Aryibi is a right winger, he's probably the very definition of a right winger. Robinson's signings can be questioned, but none of those statements above are accurate!

With all the information, statistics, footage and whatever else is at a manager's disposal these days if any prospective manager pitches up at Fir Park looking for work and genuinely requires months to assess what he has to work with, then he clearly hasn't done his due diligence and won't be getting anywhere near the manager's office.

Given the budget I would say overall the percentage of decent signings is actually ok. The problem at the moment is we are not using them effectively.

Well depends if they are better than the likes of Gannon, Barraclough and Robinson. Doesn't need to be an 'old Scottish fitba favourite' type but I'll take any competent manager over any of these chancers who's many qualification seems to be enthusiasm and positivity like some half wit office team leader rather than someone steeped in tactical knowledge of football.

https://www.mfc1886.com/mfc-podcast-2018-19-episode-25/ This week’s podcast is online now.

Shit signings in the summer. players constantly changing position. tactically all over the place. But for me it’s the standard of football at home that is the nail in the coffin. It’s is fucking dreadful and possibly the worst I have seen at Fir Park for years.

The club as well as the player himself will have similar doubts. His mental challenge will be every bit as difficult as his physical one

I'd say half of the side on Saturday were at it, but maybe not in the accepted context of football these days and the more old fashioned sense. Was interesting at one point to see Hartley having a go at Aldred and Gillespie for passing out from the back so the players seem mixed on the passing versus lumping it forward. If he can change the style quickly the whole outlook may change, but for the first time in a long time the thought of going to see us play is filling me with dread. Robinson and this squad have a strange knack of winning games that they are written off in so he can obviously motivate them... The worry is the games they are expected to win are more often than not ending in defeat this season.

So it's now changed to 'pace going forward' as opposed to pace? Johnson is unfit rather than having no pace then. He has pace, and I'd argue that the showed enough pace and fitness to score the late equaliser against Celtic. So there are left wingers at the club after all? Just that we haven't played with wingers and loaned one out? Aryibi has pace, has played all his career as a right winger, but because he's just signed that's indicative that the manager hasn't done anything to address the lack of pace and a right winger?

Taking it position by position GOALKEEPERS As others have said, Robinson's record is decent here. Carson and Gillespie are good goalkeepers. Xenodochov was clearly a short term fix, would seem harsh to judge him on that. Griffiths (for he signed him permanently too) was far from the worst back-up keeper we've had but wouldn't have wanted him as first choice. DEFENDERS. Maybe this should be in two sections. Centre halfs, generally he's done ok. Kipré and Dunne were both excellent last season. Hartley was great til January 2018, Aldred great after that (still unsure whether they should play as a pair). Giving Hartley a permanent deal while carrying an injury was a bad decision as he hasn't looked the same player since. Plummer was a waste of a wage due to injury and sadly Liam Donnelly looks to be heading the same way. On Donnelly, I don't think he's looked as bad as some have made out and certainly hasn't been helped by coming in at a time when we lost Dunne and Kipré and Hartley was returning looking half the player he was when he first arrived. Full backs, or to be more precise left backs is another story. Hendrie and Taylor-Sinclair are strange in that he signed them and you got the impression, having signed them, he didn't like the look of them. Neither of them have convinced in the role but without extended runs who can tell. A preference for playing Frear there or Tait, allowing Cadden to play right wing back certainly suggests they aren't doing anything in training. MIDFIELDERS Sigh. Where to start here. He has signed a fair few centre midfielders but they all look pretty similar. Rose and Grimshaw do a lot of unfashionable dirty work. In his few cameos, Gorrin looks to do the same job despite the suggestion he would be more creative (take better care of the ball was, I think, the phrase used). Bigirimana, has shown in flashes what he can do but as soon as Robinson stumbled across his McHugh-Campbell-Rose midfield and it fitted his plans, he's been marginalised. Doesn't track runners but certainly can pass. Would his defensive frailties have been as noticeable had he had last season's back three playing behind him earlier this season? Maybe not, but like the left backs, seems like a signing Robinson decided very quickly wasn't for him. Tanner is the real shame. A creative player that seemed to fit into our team. I suspect had he been fit, we'd be a good few points better off given one goal would have made a difference in so many results. FORWARDS Fisher and Sammon are guys that from word one, just haven't seemed to have fit in, it hasn't for whatever reason worked. Petravicius. Not sure of the point of his signing. Signed a winger at a time when Robinson would rather have cut off his own leg than play a winger. Ciftci just seemed like a bad fit, short term panic signing (I fear we may end up saying the same about McCormack). Main looked like a world beater for four months but for whatever reason, now looks like he hasn't seen a football before. Did he start to believe his own hype or were the first four months an anomaly? Starting to suspect the latter. Newell, like Plummer, a waste of a wage on injury record alone. Johnson is simply a goalscorer who doesn't add much else. Fine if you have another striker to do the hard yards (Still can't fathom why we didn't see more of Johnson and Bowman as a pair other than the manager's perseverance with Main). Looking at it (and obviously it's not just Robinson but the scouts that this applies to), he seems to do alright signing goalkeepers, centre halfs or hard working midfielders. Struggles to see a creative player, or spot one that he can fit into his tactics. Tanner being the notable exception. Guess that explains why as we get further into his tenure, we're scoring fewer and fewer goals...

His time is well and truly up. We should be bringing the new man in so he can assess the squad before the summer. Robinson has a habit of just doing enough to relieve the pressure. I don’t think he will manage it this time. Defeat on Wednesday and at Dens and he is gone!

Just listened to Robbo's interview and I get the impression that the pressure is getting to him; he was quite defensive. Interesting that he didn't seem to think that playing MacCormack from the start was a mistake. Suggests to me that we underestimated County and thought that we could afford to give MacCormack a 45 minute training exercise. Interesting too that he admitted playing Johnson as a lone striker/target man was a mistake. That baffles me, because we as posters, are not professional football managers yet many of us thought that was the wrong role for Johnson, especially against a big physical defence. If we could see it why couldn't he before kick off? Our previous style of football has been sussed by other clubs and we do need to change and evolve but it seems to me that he tried to do it too suddenly in one fell swoop on Saturday without having the players to do it.

We need to stop fishing for players from English non-league clubs and look to the lower divisions in Scotland for potential players.

Does the chief scout not have a huge part to play in this? Can't all be put on Robinson. Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Watched it last night, thought it was excellent but yes wonder what score was with Dougie and Paterson. Ferguson looking very dapper and I won't ask why Psycho had a plaster on his nose!!

Any insight as to why Dougie Arnott didn't feature at all? Clearly get the sense that he and the club haven't parted on good terms, but seems a missed opportunity not having him on there at all. Likewise Craig Paterson (Maxwell more understandable given where he lives I guess).

This might just be me, but for a club like ours, who operate in the market that we do, 8 failures from 25 isn't actually all that bad. Every player we sign is a risk, some work some don't that is the nature of it. I reckon most clubs in world football would take a return similar to ours. Barcelona for example spent the best part of 300m on Coutinho, Dembele and Malcolm and they are looking to offload all three.

Sensible post, I understand exactly what You are saying, but I have a different viewpoint on it. Weve fucked it up now by not getting rid in Nov / early Dec. Now any potential new Management team wont get to sign any players, however, they would get a few months to assess the current squad and work out who is worth a contract. Any move is a gamble, but its clear looking at our league results over the last 14 months that the Managers time is up. Apart from a Scottish Cup run last season (which did involve a good skelping of luck), we have been utterly utterly dismal for 14 solid months, and now this season, that poor form has run into both cups which in turn will have seriously hit us in the pocket. Im not sure I know of any club in the world where such garbage would have been tolerated for so long! We get a new management team in, they assess the squad (the majority of whom will be playing for contracts!) and we hit the ground running come the summer. What we dont need is to wait for the summer, then decide to sack Robbo & start a manager hunt. Its likely to be mid June before the new guy starts which gives zero time to assess things and get signings in.

Think the English Premiership has down graded the FA cup with teams playing under strength teams to try and stay in the league as the bigger picture........and it has rubbed off up here......im sure you used to get the 3rd round on the season ticket The old"third" round of the cup used to be a big thing when I was younger ,can always remember the claret and Amber rosettes in the late 60s early 70s and every one was "Up for the Cup"......... Tragic days......quarter final defeat against Killie at FP......... away 1-3 Stirling Albion.....Wednesday afternoon kick off replaygame against Ayr .....then losing to the ugly sisters after replays......Dixie scoring for Smeltic in quarter final replay under the lights at FP.........then the unmentionable in 1975........hibs X 3 in 76 quarter final.......28000 at FP against St Midden 1977 Fergie Fergie shut yer mouth........we always seemed to get the old firm (especially Rangers)who knocked us out regular basis 4/5 times in the mid 70sc

I'll echo Jake Hastie. A dismal performance but a chink of light there.

It's easy for the fans to just say "bin him, get him tae fuck," but the club actually have to weigh up the very serious pros and cons of sacking a manager at this stage of the season. Look at the facts. We're 9th. We're 7 clear of Accies, we're 9 clear of St Mirren, and we're 11 clear of Dundee. For St Mirren to catch us we'd need to drop 3 games while they win 3 games. They've won 3 games all season. For Dundee to catch us we'd need to drop 3 games, draw 2 and they'd need to double the amount of points they've won all season. Dundee have won twice this season. We're 8 points behind Hibs in 8th. We're not catching them. At worst we're looking at a 10th finish, if somehow Accies manage to suddenly go on a run while we lose. Granted, we're poor, but we're still better than the clubs below us, which is all that matters for now. Robinson knows the players, and can get the minimum that he needs from them. We're out of both cups. If any club happens to be sniffing around Robinson, there's a better chance he moves in the summer. We waive the compensation we'd be due, we part ways. We could then bring a new manager in with a clean slate. We have a fair amount of players out of contract this summer, so there's going to be the chance to make big changes. There's also a wider range of choice in the summer as far as managers go. Or, we could roll the dice and bump the manager just now. We'd likely need to pay him off. He's got a contract until May 2020, so unless he's secretly loaded I don't see him walking away from a contract without another job to go to. We either appoint someone on an interim basis, or we grab someone from the slim pickings that's available at this time of year. The new manager comes in and has to hit the ground running. These aren't his players, and chances are we can't shift many until the summer. We run the risk of total collapse, which we've seen happen elsewhere. I know this isn't the answer folk want to hear, but the smart choice is riding this wave of mediocrity until the summer. At that point we can reassess, we've got a lot of players with contracts up so if a new manager is coming in he gets a clean slate to work with. The only way I see Robbo going before the summer is if we get another club wanting him this season, or if we collapse and end up in danger of the drop. Bearing in mind that this would also involve one or both clubs at the bottom seriously getting their act together as well.

I think it is clear that our plan is to tread water while we pay off the debt, and the board may be happy with scraping by in 9th or 10th place in the meantime. The thought might be that we’re essentially developing a manger, in that by the time we have a little more money to spend Robbo will have a few years experience and a squad that he’s built. It may also be that the board don’t think that the job is an attractive one because of this remit and the small budget, so it’s not worth the cost of paying off Robinson and hiring a new manager from a limited pool. His interview yesterday sounded like he was telling the fans that he’s meeting (exceeding?) the boards requirements. Which is fair enough, if they have given him targets and a strict remit, and he’s meeting it, then he has every right to feel that he should keep his job. However, I’d argue that while it is well known that the manager can put on a great training session, he’s done nothing to suggest he has the tactical knowledge to make a team of limited talent passable. He openly questions his own decisions in interviews, throws his players under the bus, and he cares too much about the criticism he gets. His interview yesterday certainly had a “beginning of the end” feel to it. Too many people at our club talk it down as well. The facts are we are one of the biggest clubs in the country, due to our history, support, and the fact that we’ve been in the top division for a very fucking long time. We’re talking about punching above our weight while Killie, St. Johnstone, and Livingston are sitting above us, and we have a manager saying that he’s the messiah for getting us to a couple of cup finals when we’re not that far removed from successive 2nd place finishes and European qualifications. I know seasons like that will come and go, but our supporters are perfectly entitled to want something better. I don’t know if there is an option out there that will get us more points between now and the end of the season than the current setup though. For a manager to be available to us now they would have to be either unemployed, untried, or employed but affordable. We would also have to bring them in a lot quicker than our last few attempts. I’m genuinely interested in folks ideas of who that person could be, because all I can see is the likes of Hughes, Hartley, et al. Thank fuck Presley took the Carlisle job.

Think it's time to hear from the club. What exactly is their vision for the organization, and how far along are we towards that vision? The fan ownership is a wonderful idea, but how viable is that with so few attending games. Hearts have started down that road, but have a committed owner at the moment, and they have a very different level of support. And, if I'm right, Hearts owner seems prepared to continue until the fan option has a better chance of succeeding.

Surely it would be Lasley ?